I am a photographer from East Hertfordshire/Essex/London. I started this blog to share some of my photography ideas and thinking. This blog is a mixture of my photography, thinking behind some photo shoots and some equipment reviews. The reviews are just my user experience and nothing more. My passion is portraits, editorial and fashion photography.
If you have any project that need a photographer, please get in touch. My website is at www.yattang.net

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Saturday, April 25, 2015

Pentax 135mm f3.5 Super Takumar M42 Lens

Recently I am taking more and more photos with the lens wide open. The lens of choice for me at the moment is the Canon 85mm f1.8 USM. A lovely lens that can produce very smooth great back ground blur. So what will happen with a 135mm lens? This is where the Pentax comes in. It was purchased on eBay for a very reasonable sum and since I already has a M42 to EOS adapter, I was good to go.

Lens

Hood

Lens and hood

Side by side with Canon 85mm f1.8

So what will happen with a 135mm lens? This is where the Pentax comes in. It was purchased on eBay for a very reasonable sum and since I already has a M42 to EOS adapter, I was good to go.

I am not expecting the Pentax 135mm lens to be as sharp as the Canon 85mm. Can the 135mm f3.5 create lovely out of focus blur? Here are a couple of test images using the Pentax 135mm lens against the Canon 85mm f1.8.

Canon 85mm f1.8 @ f1.8

Pentax Super Takumar 135mm f3.5 @ f3.5

The Canon 85mm f1.8 can achieve much smoother back ground blur than Pentax135mm f3.5. Also the minimum focus distance is longer with the Pentax. I couldn't get a tighter crop with it.

Here are the 100% crop in the centre for both of them.

Canon 85mm f1.8 100% crop

Pentax Super Takumar 135mm f3.5 100% crop

Sharpness is not bad for an old lens, but back ground blur is clearly not as smooth but very useful. The contrast is higher for the Canon lens as well. For an old lens, the Pentac did really well. I am quite impressed. Of course manual focusing is not for everyone. This is just a quick look. A more detailed comparison will follow later on.